Thursday, September 6, 2012

Today we have an interview with Travis McBee, author of the Bridgeworld series, as well as an excerpt and giveaway of the second book, Encounter at Atlantis! Bridgeworld is about Will, a boy with a seemingly perfect life, until her gets a scholarship to his parents old alma mater and discovers a secret about himself that will change the way he views the world forever! Make sure to scroll to the bottom of the page to enter the giveaway! Here's a quick synopsis of the Bridgeworld series:

“Bridgeworld is a YA series about a world where aliens not only exist, but they’re humans just like you and me. The story revolves around a boy whose parents moved to Earth before he was born and didn’t bother to tell him about their real past. He finds out only after he is given a scholarship to their alma mater—Bridgeworld. He accepts his scholarship and embarks on numerous adventures.”

Tell us a little about yourself.

I’m twenty-two, from Georgia, and I write books.

What inspired the Bridgeworld series?

I came up for the idea for Bridgeworld while sitting on my couch, thinking about a book I had read years before about a boy who finds out his entire community was aliens. I wondered what would happen if he had to go back to his parent’s community without his friends.

Why did you want to write about aliens?

The fact is that I don’t like aliens—at least in the normal sense. I really don’t connect well with characters that are a completely different species, have different customs, and even speak different languages. When I first tried to write Bridgeworld, it was that simple dislike of mine that made me quit. Then I had the simple idea of just making them normal. Why can’t humans be in space? Why can’t there be a civilization that moved to space and left the rest of us behind, ignorant of them. So I just made everyone human. There’s no “alien” in my books. Everyone is human, they speak English—thanks to a special device that translates speech—and they live a similar existence, although there are quite a few differences, of course.

What was the most challenging thing about writing the Bridgeworld series?

Getting started. Bridgeworld was my first novel, and I didn’t know how to write a book. I had a few false starts where I would get a few chapters in, get turned around and lost, then quit. It was only after a fellow writer really suggested pre-writing that I managed to get my ducks in a row and go full steam ahead.

What is your favorite line from Bridgeworld and why?

My favorite line comes at the end of the prologue:

“He never considered the fact that he was different from any of the other children; to him, he was just the son of Barbara and Steven Haynes and a normal boy from Earth.”

I feel like it really sets the stage for the entire story. There’s incredible things out there: flying saucers, zero gravity rooms, and devices that let you speak any language with perfect fluidity, but it’s subtly hidden. So subtle, in fact, that a boy born of people raised in the midst of such strangeness had no idea.

Excerpt:

Introduction from Travis: This little scene is a snippet from a chapter where Will and his friends go Ticking. Ticking is short for Lunaticking, and the premise of the game is simple—make the poor Earthlings go crazy. Since he’s from Earth, he decides that nothing sounds more fun than a little revenge on his ex-girlfriend.

Jessica Hawk loved talking on her phone. When she dated Will she would keep him awake late into the night talking about the juicy gossip that was going around school. Unfortunately for her, her new boyfriend was not quite as accommodating for such frivolous conversation and would frequently tell her to. “Just shut up!” before sharp click on her phone would announce that he had hung up. So Jessica turned to her bratty girlfriends who all hero worshiped the ground she walked on.

The Sunday night in question she was busy lamenting her distress at Daniel’s lack of manners to her best friend, Cindy Mayberry.

“I mean he’s just not a gentleman Cindy!” she complained into the phone for the third time that night. “I know he has a car and that’s like super cool, but it’s a complete piece of junk. It smokes and stuff and I always get out smelling like car. Plus he never opens the door for me like Will would.”

She took a breath and a blabbering reply cascaded out of the earpiece.

“I know I know,” Jessica said after Cindy had stopped talking. “But I had to dump him you know that! Besides he went away to that boarding school in Europe or something like that.”

Cindy began to talk to her idol again but her voice was interrupted by a sharp bleep. Jessica glanced at her phone and saw that she had gotten a text message. The text that sat snuggly under the picture of the envelope mysteriously read “Unknown”. She depressed the key on the phone to open the text and read quickly.

“Look out your window.”

Jessica frowned at the phone for a second before rising to her feet and padding across the pink utopia that was her bedroom.

Her room was equipped with a pair of windows that peered into the backyard that was pitch black. She squinted through the clear glass and fought her eyesight through her reflection that shone back at her as clearly as if the window had been a mirror.

As she first squinted out she didn’t see anything except the deep darkness of midnight.

“Hello? Jessica?” Cindy called out to her through the phone.

Jessica opened her mouth to respond when flashing lights began to illuminate her room in hypnotic bursts.

“What the..” she trailed off as something descended in front of her window

It was large circular something that looked like the UFO’s she saw on the rare occasions when she had watched a science-fiction movie. It was gleaming black with small windows along the dome in the center that peered out at her. She could see the vague shapes of heads outlined in the glass but it was too dark to see who, or what, they were.
She dropped her phone to the ground as her hand went limp and her mouth drooped slightly as shock riddled her body. From the phone Cindy began to call out again but Jessica didn’t hear her.

The UFO hovered facing her for a few seconds, seconds that felt like hours to Jessica, before it began to ascended further into the sky. When the bottom of it passed her window she saw that a rope was dangling out a small opening in the bottom of the flying saucer. She looked down at what it was tied to and screamed.

Her ex-boyfriend, Will, was tied to the end of the rope and he thrashed about trying to free himself as he was drug higher and higher into the air. Jessica looked into his face and saw fear etched into every line of his handsome features. Will looked her dead in the eye and then vanished as the flying saucer flew higher into the air.

Jessica stood staring at the place where her ex had been hanging just moments before. The only movement or sound she made was the shallow rapid breaths that flitted in and out of her nose at an incredible pace.

Her phone broke her from her stillness a minute later with the soft chirruping beep that announced a text message. She bent down and picked it up from the floor where she had dropped it. Cindy had already hung up after receiving no response and no noise came through the speaker as she looked at the screen. A small envelope stood unopened on the blue background and under it was the simple word Unknown. She clicked the small button that opened the message.

She stared at the message for five full seconds before dropping the phone back to the floor and taking a huge gulp of air.

“DADDY!” she screamed at the top of her lungs and ran out of her room slinging the door open so hard the handle left a round hole in her wall as it slammed into it.

On the floor the phone continued to show it’s simple message from the unknown sender. For another minute before winking away as if it had never existed.

“You’re next.”

Thanks so much for stopping by today, Travis! Make sure you enter the giveaway below to win a Kindle ebook copy of Encounter at Atlantis!